Dispatches from the 10th Crusade

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I Refuse To Sneer

This past weekend the Chicago Sun-Times decided to inform Chicago area readers of the importance of the views of a Congressman from Georgia. Actually, they just decided to run an AP article about this important Congressman, who made important remarks that all the readers in the Chicago area needed to learn about, even though these important remarks were actually about a week old and were made to the Congressman’s church.

What could be so important to Chicago area readers you ask? Did the Congressman make disparaging comments about the State of Illinois? Did he comment on the recent Chicago public school teachers strike? Did he propose budget cuts that would disproportionately impact the voters in the State of Illinois? Of course not silly – why would the paper (or the AP) want to report on something of substance to its readers. Instead, they wanted to alert all the Chicago area readers to the following:

U.S. Rep. Paul Broun (R-Ga.) said in videotaped remarks that evolution, embryology and the Big Bang theory are “lies straight from the pit of hell” meant to convince people that they do not need a savior.

The Republican lawmaker made those comments during a speech Sept. 27 at a sportsman’s banquet at Liberty Baptist Church in Hartwell. Broun, a medical doctor, is running for re-election in November unopposed by Democrats.

“God’s word is true,” Broun said, according to a video posted on the church’s website, http://bit.ly/TefuyK. “I’ve come to understand that. All that stuff I was taught about evolution and embryology and Big Bang theory, all that is lies straight from the pit of hell. And it’s lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior.”

Broun also said that he believes the Earth is about 9,000 years old and that it was made in six days. Those beliefs are held by fundamentalist Christians who believe the creation accounts in the Bible to be literally true.

Let me say right here that even though I don’t agree with Rep. Broun when it comes to his views of evolution, embryology and the Big Bang theory (first developed by a Catholic priest!) I suspect, although I can’t be totally sure unless I reviewed his voting record, that Representative Broun would do a much better job for the citizens of my Congressional district than the current Democratic hack who occupies the position. Indeed I bet that Rep. Broun and I share many, if not most political views as fellow conservatives, and I could care less that he doesn’t share my views of certain scientific truths as long as he reliably votes to shrink federal spending, protect the unborn, defend the traditional definition of marriage, reduce onerous business regulation, increase domestic energy production, etc., etc. In other words, the AP and the Chicago Sun-Times run a story like the one above so all of its so-called sophisticated readers can sneer and scoff at Rep Broun and the people who elect him and pat themselves on the back for holding much more so-called “enlightened” views. Meanwhile, many of them elect politicians who are slowly bankrupting the country, passing immoral legislation when they aren’t passing legislation that is ineffective or just plain foolish and doing the kinds of crazy things that we expect from liberal politicians (they are thick on the ground here in Chicago).

I refuse to play along. In fact, the first thing I thought of when I read that story was Rep Todd Akin, who I thought was also shamefully treated by the media as well as the Republican establishment. Although in Rep Akin’s case it was even worse – the guy admitted he said something foolish and yet no one was willing to give him a break (even though we need that Senate seat and even though McCaskill can be beat if we give Akin the support he needs). Again, all the sophisticates don’t want to touch Akin with a ten foot pole because the guy said something stupid but give someone like President Obama a total pass for sitting in Reverend Wright’s pews for roughly twenty years. The hypocrisy and double-standards of the media shouldn’t surprise, but it still does; and their contempt for those folks out there who are fighting the good fight but might not be as smooth on their feet as a liberal politician who is literally passing evil legislation – it just boggles the mind.

Don’t play along and stand up for the Rep. Brouns of the nation – they need our help.

Comments (63)

Also, I wonder what he meant about embryology. You might actually agree with him there. It's unclear what he meant. For example, he might have meant that he was taught some implication that embryos are not fully human beings. Or he might have meant that Haeckel faked some of his embryo drawings and that Haeckel's discredited ideas (and sometimes even his faked drawings) were used in science textbooks up until _way_ more recently than they should have been. You could reject both Broun's version of creationism and intelligent design theory and agree with all of that. And actually, IMO, you should agree with that part.

I agree with the post, by the way. Thanks! :-)

The worst is the treachery of the fellow republicans. I think you would like this scathing article by George Neumayr.

Well, I hope he's a better physician and representative than he would be a science teacher. He's apparently had an epiphany, and you can't argue with an epiphany, which makes for an awfully short and one-sided scientific discussion.

Yup, gotta love it when the folks who--in the face of the science--insist that unborn kids are not human, can't feel pain, etc., get all up on their scientific high horse when somebody says something uninformed about evolution. Never mind that the first kind of scientific ignorance results in killing babies--and is thus directly relevant for a Representative--while the second kind of scientific ignorance results mostly in, well, entertainment for Chicago newspaper readers. (I'm overstating the case a little--views on evolution will bear more directly on questions of funding scientific research, say--but compared to the deaths of nearly a million Americans a year, research funding is really pretty small potatoes.)

Not that my own eyes are completely wood-free, of course. But my sins are different :-}.

Thanks for those excellent comments about embryology and that link to the wonderful column from Neumayr. He was spot on.

Peter,

I couldn't have said it better myself.

TSI,

I guess you didn't bother to read my post. The whole point was that folks can be quite ignorant of certain scientific discoveries and theories and make excellent Congressmen. Also, see Peter's comment for why some errors are worse than others.

Liberals like to mock those who think that a politician's personal morality is relevant to their ability to govern. And yet, they go ballistic whenever someone holds an ideological or philosophical belief that has been designated as crazy by the elite establishment. I remember Mike Huckabee raised his hand during a primary debate when asked if he disbelieved evolution. The liberals I knew went absolutely meshuggah over that remark, and I challenged them to point to one single policy ramification that followed from his belief (which turned out to be a form of theistic evolution). Of course, they couldn't; they just went back to sputtering and sneering as if he was guilty of some kind of ritual purity violation. Liberals are so used to speaking among themselves that they just draw a blank whenever someone puts these kinds of simple questions to them. Questions like "What will be the practical scientific consequences of someone believing that humans were specially created? What biological research programs that affect our collective well-being will be jeopardized or derailed?" Blank stares, all around.

Oh, Untenured, didn't you know: American education will suffer and America will become less competitive in the future, because our children will be deeply ignorant. I'm sure we can find an *important* policy matter for Mr. Broun in there somewhere.

(Btw, I can't help wondering if the Chicago newspaper would have reported similarly on a Muslim running for office who told a mosque group that he believes there is a stone in mecca that fell from heaven and is holy.)

There is a connection here between Jeffrey S.'s post and my piece on scientific illiteracy in the NYT. My final paragraph there began,

Next time I hear some self-satisfied fellow talking about how we need a political "science debate," I'm going to be much tempted to make a few suggestions of my own, viz.: How about if, first, scientists clean the Augean stable of the academy, booting out people like Hampikian who abuse their positions to convey outright misinformation in the service of a feminist political agenda?

It's my belief (and I don't think this is really so conjectural as all that) that the whole "science presidential debate" movement (you can google it) is closely related to what Jeffrey is writing about here and what Untenured mentions about his liberal friends. Basically, the idea is to "smoke out" any would-be candidates who don't accept the present liberal-favored line on particular scientific topics, including evolution. I would imagine that even an OEC candidate who nonetheless believed that man was specially created and that ID has good arguments would receive the same treatment. To my mind, the agenda of the "science debate" concept is pretty transparent, though the smoking-out intent no doubt covers other subjects like anthropogenic global warming as well as evolution. Yet liberals just love to engage in scientific obscurantism when it comes to conception and procreation. And these are not just people holding non-mainstream views but people who know the truth very well and are simply fuzzifying it for their own ends, which is worse.

Exactly, Lydia. For liberals, appeals to "science" are only ever made in an incantatory fashion. When science starts suggesting things that undercut liberals, such as the now well confirmed and apparently innate variations in intelligence between the races and genders, say, they will buy into any crackpot alternative theory in order to avoid the unpleasant conclusion. Bruce Charlton once pointed out the cognitive dissonance here: Liberals refuse to accept the observable consequences of evolution no matter how much evidence accumulates for them, because that would mean the end of the egalitarian fantasy. And yet, they demand that we treat unobservable, theoretical component of evolution as absolutely certain, lest traditional religion and its dreaded sexual morality gain a toehold in the space of reasons. For the liberal, then, we must simultaneously deny the observable facts of genetic difference while treating the speculative and theoretical claims about human origins as though it were epistemic bedrock. It is sheer madness, but it is almost never commented upon or recognized.

Thank you for this. I personally consider myself an intellectual, which is why I recognize much of what passes for mainstream "science" as the bogus bull-crap that it is. That doesn't necessarily mean I could sign a fundamentalist statement of faith, but in terms of where my sympathies lie, they lie much closer to Paul Broun and his ilk than the Chicago Sun-Times and their ilk.

Lack of judgement about what? The great pressing matter of teaching the Big Bang theory to our school children, which we all know should be the top priority of Congressmen anyway?!

Give me a break. What you should be concerned about are the actual laws/policies that politicians vote for -- for example, Rep Broun voted for the repeal of Obamacare earlier this year. Seems like he has good judgement after all.

Lack of judgement about rhetorical excess. Evolution or the Big Bang may be wrong, but a lot of people believe them in an apparently non-demonically-inspired way and it won't endear you to anyone to start characterizing entire fields of inquiry as lies from pits of hell. This is especially true given the dim view the establishment already has of creationists. If these matters are irrelevant to governance then a prudent politician would avoid them entirely except when asked. Why give controversial opinions in the most inflammatory way possible? Like I said, total lack of judgement. I'll never understand the mindset that seems to react to negative stereotypes by doubling them and playing them straight.

Even then. Politicians these days should be smart enough to know that everything they do or say is potential public knowledge.

Did his audience agree that evolution, embryology, and the big bang are lies from the pits of hell devised to turn people away from Christianity? One thing that annoys me about our media is when they portray Bible-belt Christians as thinking things like this, when the actual beliefs are much milder and the specific political application mainly centered around not having to subject their children to instruction in myths they don't believe.

Did his audience agree that evolution, embryology, and the big bang are lies from the pits of hell devised to turn people away from Christianity?

The regnant embryology of the Supreme Court of the United States is indeed a lie from the pit of hell. It's also ten-times the practical scientific blunder of what we see vis-a-vis evolution in the Congressman. As Lydia has so brilliantly shown, you can write for the NY Times while still promoting elisions and fraudulent ambiguities about when a unique human being appears in the biological development of our species so asinine they would be instant cause for the dismissal of 4th grade bio teacher.

What is especially fun about Broun is that he is a member of the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology alongside Todd Akin. I see you've convinced George R. to support those remarks wholeheartedly, but I should remind you he has gone on record here disputing heliocentrism, so I won't be trusting his astrophysics anytime this millennium.

Matt, this is all about tribal markers. I won't sneer at Broun, but I refuse to pretend he should be making policy decisions about science he "knows" is a lie.

Hmmm, Step2, it would at least be interesting for you to list specific policy decisions that will be influenced clearly and directly by Broun's opinions.

I also remind everyone: Haeckel did fake his embryo drawings. Which means they are a lie. And that was, my guess, what Broun had in mind. Whether they are "straight from the pit of hell" probably depends on whether you believe in the pit of hell or connect it with scientific fraud.

Paul, I never claimed I wasn't a tribal/political animal. I engage in some introspection simply by interacting with all of you here, so give me a little credit for that.

Regarding the New York Times article, I agree he was deceptive but it isn't like I'm in a position to do anything about it. Let me put it this way, there are people (left, right, and center) who are willing to say an outright lie or half-truth to support their arguments. That doesn't mean I have to denounce every occurrence of that happening in order to prove I'm trustworthy. Although this blog is frequently about politics, if I asked you to denounce every GOP pundit or politician who says something wrong or wildly exaggerated in order to prove your integrity, you would correctly point out that they are responsible for their own speech and you are responsible only for yours. So why would you hold me to the same guilt-by-association standard you would correctly reject for yourself? By that same token, please note that I didn't offer a defense for him and say, "Well, he is lying but it's okay because he's part of the feminist tribe." It doesn't benefit my reputation to make excuses for him when I think he is wrong.

As for specific policy decisions, it seems like Broun should vote against some kinds of astronomy and particle physics research, namely those that attempt to confirm or discover clues about the Big Bang, since he knows it didn't happen. In regards to evolution, much of the research in genetics and epigenetics is premised upon evolutionary theory being true, so I'm unsure what the point of funding any of that would be from his perspective. If his concern with embryology is about the Haeckel drawings he has a valid complaint, but if not then probably not.

Re: the pit of hell. Even if I were to grant that there is one, even the most extreme crimes could not justify the punishment of an eternity of torture, although under the eye for an eye theory there could be a lengthy yet still limited amount of extreme punishment.

In regards to evolution, much of the research in genetics and epigenetics is premised upon evolutionary theory being true

I hear this all the time, but I've never seen an example proffered of an experiment that would be impossible to conduct absent the assumption than men evolved from amoebas. I'm not asserting positively that there's no such experiment or research, but really, I'm stumped as to what it might be and would be interested in the answer. Usually I find that this assertion equivocates between the obvious, observable, and basically uncontroversial sort of microevolution that practically nobody denies--other than, as pointed out by Untenured, certain liberals--and the speculative, unobservable, and logically bedeviled macroevolutionary theory that doesn't seem to impinge on "here and now" research in genetics at all.

However that might be, you're right that Broun would be obligated to object to funding of certain research if he knows it to be a big pack of lies, and that is one reason Congressmen shouldn't talk that way about subjects in which they are not, to put it mildly, exactly experts. But it's also true that it's an extraordinarily rare case when a Congressman is afforded the chance to "vote on" such a narrow spending provision, rather than voting on a massive budget packed with all sorts of things to which he might object if given the chance to vote on them individually. In fact, casting votes in favor of such bills is normally what one would expect, and a refusal to do so is usually offered up as evidence of extremism and intransigence, especially when it's a conservative doing the refusing. So I suppose he just can't win.

Step2 -- fair enough on your introspection in engaging us. But the falsification of human embryology is not confined to one piece of obscurantism in The New York Times. It spans virtually the entire pro-choice faction, because it comes down to a denial of what science plainly demonstrates: that a new human being appears at conception, not before and not after. Rare is the pro-choicer who concedes that abortion kills a real, live, unique human being; the vast bulk of these folks construct elaborate sophistries that simply falsify established and otherwise unquestioned science.

I've just been browsing the pages on the committee Step2 refers to and must say that, at least at a quick look, Sage is quite right. I see no foothold there for, say, a congressman who thinks the Big Bang didn't happen to oppose research on the Big Bang.

This point of Sage's is also spot-on:

I hear this all the time, but I've never seen an example proffered of an experiment that would be impossible to conduct absent the assumption than men evolved from amoebas.

Of course, there is research that starts out with, say, two elaborate and highly conjectural evolutionary scenarios in mind as the only options and tries to decide between them on the basis of some genetic sequencing, then publishes a paper with its conclusions on that restricted question. I will go ahead and mark myself for life as "anti-science" by saying that I doubt that the sum total of human knowledge would be badly affected if American tax dollars didn't go to pay for that type of research.

The Big Bang Theory is so riddled with absurdities and inner contradictions that it would never be seriously held by any rational person, except for the fact that it is ideologically expedient to do so.

But let’s assume for the sake of argument that this silliness is true. That would mean that the Earth, along with rest of our galaxy, would be hurtling through space at a staggering speed. Yet the interferometer experiments, which are designed to detect motion through space, do not detect any translational motion of the Earth whatsoever. Of course, the scientific community explains this by resorting to Einstein’s Special Theory of Relativity. But the curious thing is that, while those interferometer experiments don’t detect any translational motion of the Earth (which should be moving through space at an astronomical speed, because of the Big Bang expansion and other things), they do, nevertheless, detect the motion of the Earth rotating on its axis (or, in the geo-static model, the rotation of the heavens around the Earth), at a piffling 4 km/sec. Of course, the scientists also manage to cook up some ad hoc explanations for this too; but at what point can we start dismissing their testimonies as obviously not being made in good faith – and stop giving them money?

You continue to surprise! I always thought the Big Bang theory was the current orthodox Catholic belief and all the crazy atheist physicists didn't like it because it implied a beginning to the universe which implies a Creator (plus there is a lot of evidence to back up the theory):

Sage, I would agree that he would have little chance of affecting a particular provision if he wasn't sitting on a committee with oversight. Since he is he can influence a particular spending line through the markup procedure.

I'm unclear why macroevolution is speculative, the irreducible complexity claim has been mostly refuted and the fossil record provides strong evidence for the emergence of diverse and complex life on the planet from simpler organisms. It also doesn't follow a straight path, which you might expect if human life was in some sense planned or designed to be the purpose of life on the planet.

It spans virtually the entire pro-choice faction, because it comes down to a denial of what science plainly demonstrates: that a new human being appears at conception, not before and not after. Rare is the pro-choicer who concedes that abortion kills a real, live, unique human being; the vast bulk of these folks construct elaborate sophistries that simply falsify established and otherwise unquestioned science.

In a technical sense, it is only potentially unique at conception. Twinning can still occur within a ten day time frame. I concede abortion kills a human being, although I have argued that it doesn't kill a human person until brain development has reached a certain level of complexity. It is also true that many people on my side obfuscate the two and say the fetus isn't human, which is plainly false.

Lydia, I can always count on you to bite the bullet. You shouldn't have any teeth left by now :)

George R., if you can somehow finagle your way into becoming a Republican spokesperson I will make it well worth your time.

But the curious thing is that, while those interferometer experiments don’t detect any translational motion of the Earth (which should be moving through space at an astronomical speed, because of the Big Bang expansion and other things), they do, nevertheless, detect the motion of the Earth rotating on its axis (or, in the geo-static model, the rotation of the heavens around the Earth), at a piffling 4 km/sec.

According to what I have read, that's not accurate. The fastest possible rotational speed of the Earth (that at the equator) - or the heavens about the Earth, whichever way you want to describe it - is about .465 km/sec, or 465 meters per sec. Any measurement of speed variance of light at 4 km/sec could not possibly be due to rotational speed.

In actuality, the earliest interferometer experiments found that IF there was a speed variance of light due to different orientations of the equipment to various motions of Earth / Sun / Solar System, that speed could be AT MOST 4 km/sec. That is not a _detection of_ motion of Earth, it was a limiting upper bound on any possible speed of such motion. I believe that later experiments reduced that possible variance to much smaller values, 30 meters/sec by 1930, and less than 1/100,000 inch/sec later still.

That the interferometer experiments trying to detect the translational motion of the Earth came back as “null result” is a fact. (Google “michelson morley experiment.”)

That the tests to detect the Earth’s rotational motion with respect to space did detect it is a fact. (Google “Sagnac Effect” and “Michelson-Gale experiment.”)

It’s also interesting to consider that, while we can know from simple observation that the Earth and the heavens rotate with respect to each other, we can only conclude that the Earth moves with a translational motion around the Sun if we conclude certain things after making other observations. And, whadaya know!, it’s the rotational motion that’s detected in the experiments and not the translational motion.

Note: Tony’s right, the Earth does not rotate a 4 km/sec; that was what was detected in the first experiments. However, he’s got to realize that the new experiments that detect virtually no motion whatsoever are adjusted for the Sagnac Effect. (See above.) They, therefore, confirm that no translational motion is detected.

In a technical sense, it is only potentially unique at conception. Twinning can still occur within a ten day time frame.

Step2, that is itself a bit of obfuscation unworthy of you. If human cloning were ever to get off the ground (which God forbid, but it's not by any means impossible), we would _all_ suddenly become merely "potentially unique" our whole lives long until we die by that definition, simply because it would always be possible that we would be cloned at some later time! You know perfectly well that that isn't what is meant by "unique" in this context, nor is it relevant to the point, which is that the newly conceived child is clearly, organismally an individual *human being*, not merely a clump of cells or a part of some other human being.

Allow me to try to clarify my position with respect to the interferometer experiments: Let RM stand for the relative rotational motion of the Earth with respect to the heavens. And let TM stand for the translational motion of the Earth around the Sun. Now, is the motion in question immediately evident to the senses? -- RM: Yes. TM: No. Is the motion in question detected by interferometer experiments? – RM: Yes. TM: No. Finally, is the motion in question reconcilable with traditional Church doctrine? – RM: Yes. TM: No.

Now what else is a good right-wing, jack-booted, reactionary Catholic boy supposed to conclude from all this but that the Earth does not revolve around the sun, and that Galileo was wrong and the Church was right after all (as always)?

3) How do you explain all the spacecraft we have sent into space that we send around the solar system which (1) successfully reach their destinations based on a heliocentric model of the solar system and (2) take photographs showing the sun at the center?

P.S. I assume you think the Church was wrong to officially apologize to Galileo in 2000, but if you do, why was the Church wrong then but right back in 1632?:

You know perfectly well that that isn't what is meant by "unique" in this context, nor is it relevant to the point, which is that the newly conceived child is clearly, organismally an individual *human being*, not merely a clump of cells or a part of some other human being.

I don't know that, furthermore I am not disputing its status as a human being one way or the other. Because cloning means making a genetic replica with a completely different development history, the clone is a unique being in my view. A process that would fit your requirements could occur with a Star Trek type transporter that could theoretically produce exact copies of the same human, with all the development history included up until that moment, but that is still very much a fictional device.

Step, a twin that comes into existence a week later also has a different development history. That is, the second twin's development history is that it came into existence later than the embryo that was in existence at conception. Attempts to pretend that an embryo in existence all along during the time when twinning could occur isn't a real human individual are futile.

But I do have to wonder: If you do think that identical twins have identical development histories and that this makes them not "unique beings," how does this influence your interactions with adult identical twins? Do you call them Thing 1 and Thing 2, or do you speak to them as a composite being, or what?

the fossil record provides strong evidence for the emergence of diverse and complex life on the planet from simpler organisms.

No it doesn't, but that wasn't the point of my comment, which was to find out how macroevolutionary theory enables experiments in genetics that would be impossible to conduct absent the assumption that it does. I'm no closer to understanding that claim than I was before your attempt to change the subject.

In a technical sense, it is only potentially unique at conception. Twinning can still occur within a ten day time frame.

These precious ambiguities. Of course you would not tolerate for a second some 6th-grade bio teacher conjecturing that at the early embryonic stage maybe a pig isn't really a pig, and thereby introducing fraudulent confusion into the minds of young students. Pro-choice is anti-science, period -- at least when it comes to embryology.

although I have argued that it doesn't kill a human person until brain development has reached a certain level of complexity.

So you condition the right to life on a stage of development. Of course, someone else could posit some other stage of development as the decisive criterion, and all they'd need is majority of the Supreme Court to exclude the rest. But we ALL at one point lacked a certain neurological complexity, and yet we are all human beings.

Step2, join the progress of science. Join the Christians, Jews, Muslims, atheists, agnostics, materialists, evolutionists who all acknowledge what science shows us: that the moment of conception is the moment of new human life.

"he might have meant that Haeckel faked some of his embryo drawings and that Haeckel's discredited ideas (and sometimes even his faked drawings) were used in science textbooks up until _way_ more recently than they should have been"
figure 2.2, page 22 of Bringing Fossils to Life shows a drawing similar to Haeckel's 1874 drawing. (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7d/Haeckel_Anthropogenie_1874.jpg) It is cited "From Romanes, 1910, after Haeckel". It seems his drawings are still around, and in my Invertebrate Paleontology class.

Funny you shd. say that, Anymouse. Jonathan Wells has been saying for quite a while that the textbooks just aren't clearing this up despite the information that is widely acknowledged. I was trying to be generous.

1) Why is what you call "TM" not "reconcilable with traditional Church doctrine"?

The thesis that the Earth revolves around the sun, and not the sun around the Earth, was condemned as “formally heretical” by the Holy Office in 1633. The Holy Office was the Supreme and Universal Inquisition of the Catholic Church. The head of the Holy Office was the pope himself. Its authority in doctrinal matters was extremely high. In fact, only ex cathedra pronouncements of the pope were of higher authority. It’s also important to realize that the Holy Office condemned heliocentrism on the grounds that it was “contrary to Scripture.” Therefore, if you say that it is not contrary to Scripture, I’ll have to ask you by what authority you make such a claim -- and I assure you that you will not be able to produce a higher authority than a condemnation of the Holy Office. Besides, it also must be remembered that when this decision came down in the 17th century it was considered a settled matter by the whole Church. Roma locuta est. Causa finita. So if heliocentrism is not heresy, that would mean that the entire Catholic Church in the 17th century was in error on a question of doctrine. Does that seem plausible?

3) How do you explain all the spacecraft we have sent into space that we send around the solar system which (1) successfully reach their destinations based on a heliocentric model of the solar system.

Any frame of reference at all can be chosen, the sun, the Earth, Mars, the moon -- and all of them can theoretically be made to work just as well. In fact, NASA actually uses the geocentric model for certain missions.

…and (2) take photographs showing the sun at the center?

Yes, the sun is at the center of the solar system, but that doesn’t mean it’s also the center of the universe? Besides, you can’t tell by looking at the solar system what is moving and what is not. Also, it’s important to know that even in the geocentric model, the planets are revolving around the sun, but the whole system is revolving around the Earth, which doesn‘t move at all.

2) How do you explain stellar aberration and parallax?

This is a really important question; for it’s because of stellar aberration and parallax that many churchmen in the 19th century lost their nerve and capitulated to the heliocentric model. But after some reflection and study it’s easy to see that the arguments from SA and SP are not at all cogent. For the only thing that SA and SP show is that the Earth is moving in relation to the stars and the stars are moving in relation to the Earth, not which is moving in the absolute sense. What that guy that you linked to didn’t bother to explain is that if the stars were moving, and the Earth remained motionless, SA and SP would occur just the same. So what did he prove? Jack squat!

But I hear the objection already: Why would the stars be moving, and, even more strangely, why would their movements correspond with the seasons of our solar year?

The short answer is this, and it’s very simple: It is well known that in all rotating bodies there is, besides their rotational motion, another motion that is slower more subtle in character. It is called a “precession.” A precession can be described as a slight wobble in the axis of the rotating body. Consider a spinning top. If you look closely at it, you’ll see, besides its rapid rotation around its axis, another motion which appears as a slight wobble which causes the axis to make the figure of a small circle on the table. Thus, there are two motions in a rotating body.

Now according to the geocentric model the entire cosmos is a very large sphere that rotates very quickly (once per day) around the Earth. Therefore, all we have to do is posit a slight wobble in the rotation of the rigid bodies contained by the sphere of the cosmos to see how the whole system might make a slow (once per year) circular precession around the Earth that can easily explain the revolution of the sun around the Earth, the seasons of the year, stellar aberration, and stellar parallaxes.

P.S. I assume you think the Church was wrong to officially apologize to Galileo in 2000, but if you do, why was the Church wrong then but right back in 1632?

The Church didn’t apologize. The Church teaches and judges, she does not apologize. She has nothing to apologize for. She is the Spotless Bride of Christ.

Thank you for your thoughtful replies. I would just note that according to "Catholic Answers" you are wrong about the authority of what you call "the Holy Office":

The Church has never claimed ordinary tribunals, such as the one that judged Galileo, to be infallible. Church tribunals have disciplinary and juridical authority only; neither they nor their decisions are infallible.

No ecumenical council met concerning Galileo, and the pope was not at the center of the discussions, which were handled by the Holy Office. When the Holy Office finished its work, Urban VIII ratified its verdict, but did not attempt to engage infallibility.

Three conditions must be met for a pope to exercise the charism of infallibility: (1) he must speak in his official capacity as the successor of Peter; (2) he must speak on a matter of faith or morals; and (3) he must solemnly define the doctrine as one that must be held by all the faithful.

In Galileo’s case, the second and third conditions were not present, and possibly not even the first. Catholic theology has never claimed that a mere papal ratification of a tribunal decree is an exercise of infallibility. It is a straw man argument to represent the Catholic Church as having infallibly defined a scientific theory that turned out to be false [or maybe false, if George is right]. The strongest claim that can be made is that the Church of Galileo’s day issued a non-infallible disciplinary ruling concerning a scientist who was advocating a new and still-unproved theory and demanding that the Church change its understanding of Scripture to fit his.

... and I could care less that he doesn’t share my views of certain scientific truths as long as ...

"Modern science" isn't about truth -- at any rate, it hasn't been since the positivists and logical positivists remade it in the image of reductive materialism -- THUS, there is no such thing as "scientific truths". Rather, there are "scientific statements" ... which may or may not be true, but in no case can "science" determine which they are.

Here's another thing-if someone could be so tremendously willfully blind to the point where they are a Creationist (I apologize to all you Creationists out there for the strong wording, but putting it more mildly would just be a different way for me to say the same thing, how much do you trust them to make complex political decisions?

It's one thing to believe things that aren't true, like scientific facts that people think are common knowledge but aren't. It's another to be a Creationist, which is a frankly ridiculous position.

Before you mention anything about democrats and embryos-you're right. I wouldn't vote for those people ideally either. I would vote for a creationist if I thought every other candidate was worse, but I wouldn't be happy about it and I wouldn't really consider it something worth just shrugging off.

I would seriously question the ability of somebody to govern me who holds a belief like that because of the specific nature of it-you're blinding yourself to the truth, not a quality you want from somebody who is going to be a leader of your country. (And yes, one of my best friends really is a creationist and he's a smarter man than me. I'm not sure I want him as a political leader though.)

...And now, looking at the tone of this a bit later, I really do regret it and I apologize, because I was "sneering". It was very rude of me. Let me say this toned down a lot and more politely, because I don't actually have any real problem with creationists and have defended them several times:

I do still think there's a point in there hidden beneath the arrogant tone and rudeness. Some religious beliefs are scientifically (scientifically, not logically) unprovable-for example, the multiplication of the bread and fish. Believing in something like this is one thing.

But believing in Creationism is another thing entirely. It's something that has been proven, at least in an entirely Biblical literalist way (for lack of a better term,) false-and it's well-known that it's false, too. What mindset do you need to believe in it? Is it really a mindset that you want somebody who's leading the government to have? Somebody who is willing to believe things that are proven to be false because it fits with their specific belief system?

Perhaps it is true-but the mindset is still there, and it seems to be a dangerous one for a political leader to have.

I understand that POV. I myself have made the joke about making a Geology text called "40 days and 40 nights of Lithification". It would have a glossy cover with showing some insane looking definite integrals superimposed on a 3D model of Noah's Ark. The creationist view as commonly understood is silly.

What we need to do is separate physical science from metaphysics and morality. Once we have done that, the physical explanation for human existence does not matter. As long as people act like it does, we wind up hearing stupid crap like "the fetus isn't alive". The only good argument for a biblical worldview must ignore physical science, and simply treat it as something not worth it's time. I will sign onto that.

The only good argument for a biblical worldview must ignore physical science, and simply treat it as something not worth it's time.

I must admit I don't understand this at all. I'm certainly not going to sign onto it.

If I may say so, as well: My own chief interest in evidences for Christianity, as readers know, is evidence for historical events such as the resurrection. But whether it is in that area or in the area of intelligent design (which is not identical with the brand of creationism believed by Rep. Broun), I find myself entirely out of sympathy with the idea that Christianity is safe and respectable only insofar as it is utterly separated from evidence and believed by a leap of faith. I find that the hatred (there is really no other word) of certain groups of people for Christianity is kept at bay so long as the Christian tells everyone, in essence, "It's okay, you can quietly despise me. My faith is entirely separated from science, believed by faith, and makes no claim on your reason. If you don't feel what I feel, if you don't make the leap I've made, then there's nothing for us to say to each other. My God is indetectable by science or history. He's a tame lion."

But let the Christian for one moment imply that there is evidence, whether in the form of evidence for design in the bacterial flagellum or evidence for miracles in the early testimony of the apostles, and the wrath of all the furies comes down upon him. Sometimes it comes from his own! There is no one quite so angry at one Christian as a Christian academic who has made his faith safely neutered and then hears his Christian brother declaring that evidence supports faith. But from the secularists as well, who no longer consider the evidentialist Christian, or his God, to be safe. Now, they must heap contempt upon him. Now, they find him dangerous.

I'd rather be dangerous. And good for the advocates of Intelligent Design for asking us to consider the possibility of a detectable designer.

George, you present an odd slice of theory. For, at one and the same time, you seem to uphold the condemnation of Galileo's heresy by the Holy Office for teaching heretical falsehoods, and yet you hold to one of those falsehoods yourself. So far as I can tell, Galileo was condemned for 2 matters - distinct but related - that are at play in the science of astronomy applied to the Earth / Sun.

suspected of heresy, namely, of having believed and held the doctrine—which is false and contrary to the sacred and divine Scriptures—that the Sun is the center of the world and does not move from east to west and that the Earth moves and is not the center of the world...

Now, George would have us repudiate Galileo's teaching that the sun is still, but accept Galileo's teaching that the sun does not move from east to west, contrary to the Holy Office, but instead that it is the Earth that spins on its axis. That seems difficult to swallow, doesn't it?

Attempts to pretend that an embryo in existence all along during the time when twinning could occur isn't a real human individual are futile.

So conceding that the zygote is a real human being is virtually an insult because I mentioned it potentially contains two individuals for the first ten days. Good grief this is absurd.

...which was to find out how macroevolutionary theory enables experiments in genetics that would be impossible to conduct absent the assumption that it does.

You are framing this very poorly because the problem is not related to what is possible, it is related to what science should attempt. To answer the problem in a realistic way, i.e. What science should be prohibited because someone believes evolution is a lie? Any research or experiment that compares the human genome to other species along our evolutionary branch should not be done, because it assumes an evolutionary connection. For that matter, I think a creationist would be uncomfortable with mapping the human genome to start with, based on the notion research of those species would be inevitable and could undermine the likelihood of a special creation event for humans.

So you condition the right to life on a stage of development.

No, if strong artificial intelligence is ever created I would claim it has a legal right to be protected from destruction.

"I'd rather be dangerous."
I would as well. But to be actively dangerous requires sufficient power for us to put a man under arrest and force him to cease his abortion without having to debate him on the physical properties of the zygote. And I feel that maneuvering ourselves into that position can better be accomplished through judicious use of social theory and sociology than physical science debates.

We need to stop and say to any "Darwinian" who claims to be "scientific" that he is just an ideologue, and no better than a geologist who believes in a literal 40 day world wide flood. I suppose my attitude may simply be a matter of personal interests. I am fascinated by modern history, and am only sanguine about going into geology because of the existence of fields like geoarcheology and ethnogeology. Physical science per se has lost most of it's magic for me.

What do you take me for, a cafeteria Catholic? I concur with all the judgments of the Holy Office. I never said the Earth rotates on its axis; I merely said it rotates RELATIVE to the heavens, just as the heavens rotate relative to the Earth. That is self-evident by simple observation. But as for which of the two is in ABSOLUTE motion, I clearly stated it was the heavens when I wrote,

Now according to the geocentric model the entire cosmos is a very large sphere that rotates very quickly (once per day) around the Earth.

In fact, my whole argument on precession was predicated on the rotation of the heavens.

Now according to the geocentric model the entire cosmos is a very large sphere that rotates very quickly (once per day) around the Earth.

No. Geocentrism is the theory that the Earth is at the center. It isn't of the essence of geocentrism as such that the Earth be stationary as well. There are two variants of that theory, which take different suppositions beyond whether the Earth is at the center: One is that the Earth itself spins and has a precessional wobble (which was Ptolemy's view, was promoted within all learned circles, and was not condemned for 1300 years), the other is that it is the celestial spheres that spin around the Earth, and presumably also have the wobble in relation to the Earth.

And, whadaya know!, it’s the rotational motion that’s detected in the experiments and not the translational motion.

Is the motion in question detected by interferometer experiments? – RM: Yes. TM: No. Finally, is the motion in question reconcilable with traditional Church doctrine? – RM: Yes. TM: No.

The theory behind the Sagnac effect is that an interferometer under acceleration (rather than inertial motion) will shows up in the measurements. If it shows up on Earth for rotational motion then the theory says the Earth is rotating. If the theory is so far off that what it is "really doing" is detecting the motion of the cosmos around the Earth, rather than the motion of the Earth itself rotating, then the theory is also so far wrong that it cannot be said to "show" the motion we think it shows, because we have completely muddled up the entire concepts of inertial motion and acceleration and how anything relates to the interferometer.

Therefore, all we have to do is posit a slight wobble in the rotation of the rigid bodies contained by the sphere of the cosmos to see how the whole system might make a slow (once per year) circular precession around the Earth that can easily explain the revolution of the sun around the Earth, the seasons of the year, stellar aberration, and stellar parallaxes.

We have plenty of examples in nature in which an object rotating about its axis has a wobble - defined with respect to its orientation to the stuff around it, outside of it. We don't have examples of larger rotating objects which have a wobble solely with respect to a stationary interior core body. Nor do we expect to see such a thing: Either (A) the outer body will have an effect on and will eventually bring the interior object into conforming motion with it, or (B) the outer body is of a different (ethereal?, non-material? non-massive and not-electromagnetic?) nature unlike that of the interior body. While we used to suppose celestial bodies were eternal, ethereal, not subject to material effects, we know now that the moon is just like Earth, and we know that the Sun is material just like other matter (but a lot hotter than most).

George, in order to maintain your notion, you would have to revise not only astronomy but also physics from the ground up, changing the interpretation of everything, and as a result none of the interferometry conclusions would be viable, including whether you can conclude something about inertial or accelerated motion out of them.

No, if strong artificial intelligence is ever created I would claim it has a legal right to be protected from destruction.

Why?

Like Bill, I doubt that it will ever happen, but if we were to suppose it did happen, it will occur in the course of planning, development, and production for it's maker's purposes. If he makes version A1, and finds that it almost does what he wants, why should he be precluded from changing it to a slightly different version, A2, that DOES do just what he wants? No viable reason. And if he decides that he no longer wants to perform that operation, why should he be precluded from simply turning off the machines that house and operate A2, and go on to invent model B1 that does something else altogether? No reason. Unlike humans, an artificial intelligence has no claim on the physical plant within which it resides, so as to "own" it. Potentially, each time you started up the system from completely off, you would get a brand new instance of an AI, so not only would the AI have to have a claim on the machinery, it would have to have a claim on the electricity it takes to keep it running...

In short, until you suppose that an AI is a person, there is no reason to protect it. And there is no way to establish that an AI is (must be?) a person that I know of. What about the possibility that some AIs are persons and some are not? Or whatever variations. What about an AI that is a person but "who" is evil by design?

I suspect that, like me, Mr Luce doesn't merely *doubt* that any computer program will ever be a mind, but rather, knows that it is impossible, even in theory (*), for any computer program ever to be a mind.

Computation -- which is merely counting -- is not what minds are. But, computation -- counting -- is all computer programs are and do.

I suspect that, like me, Mr Luce doesn't merely *doubt* that any computer program will ever be a mind, but rather, knows that it is impossible, even in theory (*), for any computer program ever to be a mind.

Considering that it took something like a 16,000 node neural network at Google to make a program capable of learning what a cat is from Google Image Search, I think we can safely conclude that anyone who thinks computers can efficiently simulate what one human brain does is ignorant.

The theory behind the Sagnac effect is that an interferometer under acceleration (rather than inertial motion) will shows up in the measurements.

No, Tony, that’s not the theory behind it. That’s just the explanation they cooked up after the results of Sagnac’s experiments came back positive, whereas similar experiments meant to detect the motion of Earth around the sun came back negative.

If it shows up on Earth for rotational motion then the theory says the Earth is rotating.

I’m not sure what “theory” you’re talking about, but according to Sagnac himself, the goal of the test was to detect "the effect of the relative motion of the ether." (Scroll down to “History.”): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagnac_effect Whether that would mean that the ether was in motion or the Earth is not something that would not be immediately obvious.

If the theory is so far off that what it is "really doing" is detecting the motion of the cosmos around the Earth, rather than the motion of the Earth itself rotating, then the theory is also so far wrong that it cannot be said to "show" the motion we think it shows, because we have completely muddled up the entire concepts of inertial motion and acceleration and how anything relates to the interferometer.

I have no idea why you think this should be the case. But let‘s see if you can answer this question: If the interferometers are able to detect the acceleration of the Earth around its axis, why can’t they detect the acceleration of the Earth around the sun? Why would you consider the Earth‘s rotation to be acceleration, but the the Earth‘s revolution around the sun to be inertial? According to my calculations, at the Equator the surface of the (allegedly) rotating Earth deviates from the inertial vector (i.e., a straight line) at a rate of .3 km/second. On other hand, the Earth in it's revolving around the sun will deviate from its inertial vector at a whopping 19 km/sec! That kind of acceleration, it seems to me, should register a Sagnac effect that’s off the charts. Yet only the Earth’s rotation is detected. Doesn't that seem strange?

I’m not a scientist, and maybe I’m missing something, but this whole “acceleration” theory to explain the Sagnac effect looks like a piece of errant ad hockery to me -- and one that would probably not bear up to close scrutiny by an unbiased expert.

Errata: Upon further review, my comments concerning the Earth's revolution around the sun are all wet. I didn't take under consideration the great difference in radius. It seems there would be no Sagnac Effect for this situation.

There's a lot of science in it, but it's not written for scientists. Much of it is pretty easy to understand. Some of it is quite involved, and I don't really grasp it myself. The best part is the end of the article, where the author goes through all the recent findings that empirically support the centrality of the Earth in the universe.

George, I have a lot of respect for knowledgeable and reputable people who call into question the "received" version of science at a given moment, and force science to re-examine its suppositions. However, Robert Sungenis is not someone I would categorize that way. The guy is a crank. For instance, he holds himself out to be a theologian, but his Ph.D. is in "religious studies", and is from Calamus International University. Now, not only is Calamus not a Catholic institution, and not only does it not teach theology, it isn't even an accredited university by any worthwhile accreditation entity in existence. Here is a list of its diplomas:

Diploma or Certificate in Psychology
Diploma or Certificate in Contemporary Spirituality
Diploma or Certificate in Religious Studies
Diploma or Certificate in New Age Studies
Diploma or Certificate in Leadership Studies
Diploma or Certificate in Change Agent Studies
Diploma or Certificate in Holistic Studies
Diploma or Certificate in Depth Psychology
Diploma or Certificate in Social Studies
Diploma or Certificate in Transpersonal Psychology
Diploma or Certificate in Independent/Interdisciplinary Studies

And the cost: 450 pounds sterling. !

In any case, he holds no certification for knowing what he is talking about on astronomy. That doesn't prove he is ignorant by itself, but it means that we're going to take his word with a grain of salt. He certainly has nothing by which one could prove that he has a scientific background.

And still, Sungenis himself does not support the claim that the Church has spoken definitively and irreformably on the subject:

Second, it is incorrect to identify this group of “conservative Roman Catholics” as a splinter group. Resurgent interest in geocentrism can be found across many religious groups, and there are some modern defenders of the geocentric hypothesis who are not members of any religious group at all. I do think all would agree that, if science had irrefutably proven that the Earth revolves around the sun, we would not be engaged in this endeavor. We would have adjusted our interpretation of Scripture to fit with the instruction of St. Augustine, that is, if science ever proves its case we will maintain that the Bible only speaks figuratively on cosmological topics.

Ilíon: I suspect that, like me, Mr Luce doesn't merely *doubt* that any computer program will ever be a mind, but rather, knows that it is impossible, even in theory (*), for any computer program ever to be a mind.

(*) which is [why] it's utterly impossible.

Mike T: Considering that it took something like a 16,000 node neural network at Google to make a program capable of learning what a cat is from Google Image Search, I think we can safely conclude that anyone who thinks computers can efficiently simulate what one human brain does is ignorant.

That would be a practical difficulty, which, in theory, might be overcome.

The problem for the strong-AI folks, the problem which makes their strange hope (*) utterly impossible, is not simply that it is impractical, but that it is theoretically/logically impossible.

Are the instructions on the back of a shampoo bottle a mind? No, of course not. However, those instructions are an example of a computer program, albeit poorly written (as written, the typical shampooing instructions instantiate an infinite loop). Making the instructions more complex will never turn them into a mind. Translating the instructions into computer-executable code will never turn them into a mind. Executing the computer code on a super-dooper-ultra-fast computer will never turn the program into a mind.

(*) Is it not strange for minds to waste their lives trying to prove that minds do not exist?

I think we can safely conclude that anyone who thinks computers can efficiently simulate what one human brain does is ignorant.

The pertinent object of enquiry is not the human brain, but the human mind.

A computer program *can* simulate some of the capabilities of the human mind; but it cannot emulate them. Specifically, a computer program can simulate any capability of mind that can be represented in terms of basic arithmetic. So, theoretically, some computer program could be written which could simulate any and all mental capabilities that can be represented in terms of basic arithmetic.

Yet, the fact remains that not all capabilities of the human mind can be represented in terms of basic arithmetic. One very simple example of a mental capability than cannot be simulated is the ability to "solve" the arithmetic equation '1 / 0 = ?' -- I have to put 'solve' in quote marks, because the equation is arithmetically insoluble ... yet, any informed human mind can see and grasp the correct answer, knowing it to be the correct answer.

A computer program does not, and cannot, know, it cannot understand. For, *all* computer programs are simply mechanical simpulations -- not even emulations -- of counting. But, even if a computer program could be written to emulate counting, they still couls never be minds, for 'mind' is not reducable to 'counting'.

I’m not a scientist, and maybe I’m missing something, but this whole “acceleration” theory to explain the Sagnac effect looks like a piece of errant ad hockery to me -- and one that would probably not bear up to close scrutiny by an unbiased expert.

Well, I am a scientist and I have done a lot of reading about geocentrism. Sungenis bases his arguments (unattributed, I think) on a theory by Dennis Sciama (who was Stephen Hawking's doctoral advisor, among many more) wherein he showed that he could use the Mach Principle to derive, independently, the equations of General Relativity (that part is correct). There is some evidence, at the quantum level, that Mach's Principle is wrong, however (if you want the paper, Zi can try to dig it up).

The Mach Principle states (from Wikipedia):

"Mach's principle says that this is not a coincidence—that there is a physical law that relates the motion of the distant stars to the local inertial frame. If you see all the stars were whirling around you, Mach suggests that there is some physical law which would make it so you would feel a centrifugal force. There are a number of rival formulations of the principle. It is often stated in vague ways, like "mass out there influences inertia here". A very general statement of Mach's principle is "Local physical laws are determined by the large-scale structure of the universe."[2]"

Sugenis posits, according to the Mach Principle, that the Earth resides at the center of a series of rotating concentric spheres of matter (which make up the Universe) which exert an inertial force. Because this inertial force is, essentially, identical to what one would get if General Relativity were the real governing theory of the universe (Sciama's proof), no one has noticed the it is the Earth that is at the center instead of a mysterious point in space where the Big Bang occurred. He argues, I think, that physicists have been so focused on General Relativity that they haven't looked elsewhere to explsin the structure of the universe.

If the Earth were the center of the universe, then the cosmic background radiation would be more uniform. There are quantum fluctuations. How does he explain them?

Also, if the stars revolved around the Earth (a form of acceleration), because they are radiating electromagnetic bodies, according to classical electrodynamic theory, I think the accelerating electric bodies (stars) should radiate energy and run down which should mean they would be slowly spiralling in towards the Earth.

I don't mean to get involved, here, but I thought I should. Your use of RM and TM are backwards, by the way and the Sagnac experiment only proves either that there is a stationary ether or that special relativity exists. The positive result was predicted by Max Von Laue before the experiment was even run and does not contradict the Michaelson-Morley effect, which only proved that the Earth is not being dragged through a moving ether. Somewhat unrelated (since it says nothing about the physics), but I studied freshman physics with one of Einstein's colleagues who was involved in duplicating the Michaelson-Morley Effect. Did I mention that I did my undergraduate work at Case Western Reserve University, where the Michaelson-Morley experiment was done?

In any case, I have no problem letting the Earth be the center of the Universe. It just makes the math messier. Astronomy, by the way, doesn't really care, either. It just makes the math easier to assume the Earth isn't the center of the universe. This is a non-issue.

Lurking Masked Chicken Because this inertial force is, essentially, identical to what one would get if General Relativity were the real governing theory of the universe (Sciama's proof), no one has noticed the it is the Earth that is at the center instead of a mysterious point in space where the Big Bang occurred.

There is no "mysterious point in space where the Big Bang occurred" -- it occurred at all points in space.

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